In a previous blog post, I’ve written about Qikom’s cutaways. Whereas, this post is a tangent on why we would like to see more cutaways made and the knowledge shared.

When we teach beginners, and show them a unique lock, often they can’t imagine what happens in the lock. As all they can see is the outside. To illustrate this, let’s play a short game with a Fichet 787. The key looks quite interesting, as it has half a dozen cutouts on each side. It’s not symmetrical, and can only be inserted in the keyway in one direction. You feel a spring pushing against the key, but at rotation it seems to be like any other lock.

If you haven’t seen this lock before, take a moment to imagine what the internals are like.

It’s quite obvious where I’m going with this. There can be almost anything inside the shiny cylinder. It will be very difficult to find the solution without taking it a part, or looking at a diagram. The cutaway, like the one from Qikom below, shows the internals from the lock. Reducing the guess work over a picture of the parts.

Is it anything like you imagined it to be?

What does the 787 do? The Fichet 787, is a push lever lock. Where the push action allows the lateral movement of the levers to rotate a set of gears to the opening position. The sidebar is a passive element that checks if the gears are all aligned. With the correct key, the cylinder moves inwards, clears a blocking element, and is able to rotate. At the same time, the key is trapped by two half circle disks.

It is quite possible you have seen this lock before, as it has been around for decades. I’ve learned about the lock in 2018, and recently expanded the knowledge at the Association des Crocheteurs de France lock conference in December 2022. I’ve learned the dovetail, which connects the cam to the core, is a fairly recent addition that prevents a (partially) destructive attack, for example.

French locks are my favorite weird lock designs, where Fichet is king. The ingenuity is admirable, with many clever ways to solve the same problem…

Qikom, lockpicker from France, created gorgeous locks cutaways and shared the images online. I believe cutaways to be very useful for understanding intricate lock designs. Where a good cutaway allows us to observe the elements of the lock while still functioning as normal.

Qikom is an associate professor in mathematics and computer science. Who got interesting in lock picking a little before 2000 after reading R. Feynman (the physicist) autobiography. Like many pickers, he is interested in the “puzzle” aspect of locks, and making a working cutaway is another kind of puzzle. Furthermore, he added, to spend more time making cutaways than picking locks!

You can find Qikom’s complete cutaway collection at: http://qikom.free.fr/. The pictures are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

I’ve asked Qikom for tips on making great cutaways. He says about his cutaway strategy:

“I don’t have a well-defined strategy when planning a new cutaway. I know people start by making a 3D model of the lock to plan the cuts, but I don’t bother. In many of the locks I’ve cut, the cutting plan isn’t all that complex, and I try to set things up, so I can adjust things incrementally. One important thing I do, is to never cut a lock on the same day that I come up with the cutting plan, to get some time to think about it.

I usually try to have at least 2 identical locks to cut, and I consider one of them to be expendable. When everything works, I can sell / trade the second one, and if not, I get to correct any mistake on the second try. A couple of times, I badly failed twice, but could salvage enough parts to get the third attempt.
But there are still some locks waiting because I wouldn’t want to mess them up.

I’ve made several embarrassing goofs along the way, but none of them would have been prevented by that! The graveyard includes several Robur, Rosengrens, Abloy, Fontaine, and Fichet… I’ve only attempted cutting an F3D when I got a couple of broken ones. This was a good idea, because the first 3 attempts were failures.

But there are still some locks waiting because I wouldn’t want to mess them up. Including the Emhart.”

Qikom often sells his cutaways online to partially fund the hobby. If you have interesting in these locks, or have a few spares that would work as a cutaway, consider contacting Qikom at qikom@free.fr